Melting a tub?!

[shotty]

Hi,
I'm slowing giving in to using a plastic tub for my BP as it seems so much more practical than my wooden viv! Anyway, I currently use two UTHs (I live in UK where its cold!) running through two proportional thermostats. My question is, can I put the tub directly onto the UTHs or should I raise the tub a small amount off of them to stop any warping or melting of the tub? I understand a UTH couldn't just melt through the plastic, but would constant heating over time do damage to the enclosure?
Cheers for looking!
Shotty

[ddbjdealer]

If your UTH's are on stats, then you won't have to worry about any damage to the tubs.... immediately. Tubs are cheap though, and they will wear out... I can only speak from my own experience, that I have had 24 15qt Sterilite tubs for a little over a year, and 6 of them get rotated out every week... they're all still fine with heat tape set to 96 degrees 24 hours a day/7 days a week. No warping, no burns, no melting.

The only melting that happens on my tubs is with a soldering iron... ughhh... Still have to burn more holes too...

[shotty]

If your UTH's are on stats, then you won't have to worry about any damage to the tubs.... immediately. Tubs are cheap though, and they will wear out... I can only speak from my own experience, that I have had 24 15qt Sterilite tubs for a little over a year, and 6 of them get rotated out every week...

Cheers for the help. One thing though, when u say they get rotated every week, do u mean u buy 6 new ones every week?

[ddbjdealer]

Cheers for the help. One thing though, when u say they get rotated every week, do u mean u buy 6 new ones every week?

Oh no, no no! Sorry for the confusion... No, I currently have 11 functional racks.... and about 80 cages... I don't completely clean out everyone's cage every week... It would be way too much work... and I'm far too lazy for that. (Don't let me confuse you, or others, again... everyone gets watered, spot cleaned and all that jazz a couple of times a week... ) but as far as complete tear downs, I have extra tubs that I set up, and swap out.

For example, in a stack of 12 tubs, I have 4 extra tubs. Every week, I ready the four extra tubs, and take the snakes from their current tubs, and place them in the new, clean ones... the next week, the 4 old tubs are cleaned and re-setup and they're put into the 5-8 spots, then the 9-12, then I start over.

So in a 12 tub rack, I actually have 16 tubs in rotation...

Hope that clears it up...

[shotty]

Ah I see! That seems like a very sensible way of doing things (coz I guess I'm lazy like you lol!)

Cheers for all the help mate!

[JLC]

The only melting that happens on my tubs is with a soldering iron... ughhh... Still have to burn more holes too...

We could make a party out of it, if you wanted....I'll bring my own soldering iron.

[ddbjdealer]

Ahhh.. the sweet fumes of plastic and Corona!

[JLC]

Ahhh.. the sweet fumes of plastic and Corona!

Beautiful! Count me in!